After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt,
shall
ye not do
Where they had dwelt many years, and were just come out from
thence, and where they had learned many of their evil practices;
not only their idolatrous ones referred to in the preceding
chapter, which it is certain they followed, ( Ezekiel 20:7
Ezekiel
20:8 ) ; but also their immoral practices, particularly
respecting incestuous marriages, after insisted on, some of which
were established by a law among them; so Diodorus Siculus relates
F17, that it passed into a law with the
Egyptians, contrary to the common custom of all others, that men
might marry their own sisters; which is one of the incestuous
marriages taken notice of in this chapter, and forbid: and
after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you,
shall
ye not do:
which land had been promised to their ancestors and to them long
ago, and whither they were now going under divine direction and
guidance, to inherit it, and are here particularly warned of the
evil practices among them, that they might avoid them: Maimonides
F18 says, these are what our Rabbins
call "the ways of the Amorites" (the principal people of the
nations of the land of Canaan), and which, he adds, are as
branches of the magic art; namely, such which do not follow from
natural reason, but from magical operation, and depend upon the
dispositions and orders of the stars, and so were necessarily led
to worship them: hence, they say, in whatsoever is anything of
medicine, in it is nothing of the way of the Amorites; by which
they mean nothing else than this, that everything is lawful in
which there appears a natural reason for it; and on the contrary,
all others are unlawful: but here respect is had not to magical
operations but to incestuous marriages, which prevailed among
that people, and which they might have received from their
ancestor Canaan, who learned them from his father Ham, of whom
Berosus F19 writes, that even before the flood
he corrupted mankind; asserting and putting it in practice, that
men might lie with their mothers, sisters, daughters, and with
males and brutes, or any other, for which he was cast out by
Noah: neither shall ye walk in their
ordinances:
which they ordained, appointed, and settled, for they were such a
people the Psalmist speaks of, which framed mischief or
wickedness by a law, ( Psalms 94:2 ) ; so
Diodorus Siculus says of the incestuous marriage before referred
to, and which the above writer, Berosus, derives from Ham their
ancestor, that they are said (nomoyethsai) , "to pass into a law"; but Aben Ezra
puts another sense on these words, let no man use himself to walk
in this way until it becomes an ordinance or statute unto him;
custom is second nature, and in course of time has the force of a
law, wherefore bad customs should be strictly guarded against.